The present invention relates to the designing of a website, and more particularly to linking pages of a website.
Today, it is possible to share multiple page documents and collections of documents with others in a networked environment, such as the World Wide Web (hereinafter simply referred to as the xe2x80x9cwebxe2x80x9d). However, linking these collections of documents in a useful manner may be a tedious task. Typically, linking is done by providing links on each web page to other web pages or documents. A user may click on one of the links appearing on the web page in a browser to navigate to the other web page or document. In order to easily navigate the collection of documents without causing confusion or being cumbersome to the user, the links shown on each web page should allow navigation of the website with a reasonable number of mouse clicks, and without displaying an overwhelming number of links on any one web page.
The creation of the links on each web page may be performed by a web author or designer by inserting a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for each link appearing on the web page. However, creating and designing a web page by typing in URLs is typically tedious, error prone and very time consuming. In addition, updating links that are scattered across several interconnected web pages can be a real chore. Therefore, the web designer may choose to use a website creation tool, which, among other features, provides a user interface (UI) for creating web pages. One popular website creation and management tool is FrontPage(copyright) 2000, developed and licensed by Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington.
Some website creation tools allow a web designer to use menus and commands to design a website""s overall structure (e.g. a web page hierarchy) in a navigation view, and to provide a separate page view in which to create and lay out a web page. An object (e.g., a navigation bar) may be defined in the page view to quickly and conveniently create xe2x80x9clivexe2x80x9d links to other web pages based on the website structure. Such live links are defined based upon the hierarchical relationship of the web pages. For example, the live links may point to one or more web pages above the selected web page (e.g., a parent or home page), one or more web pages on the same level as the selected web page, (e.g., sibling pages), or one or more web pages below the selected web page (e.g., a child page). These live links are then displayed as part of the web page when a user views the web page via a browser.
While the navigation bar greatly simplifies the creation of certain links, this mechanism is not ideal. For example, the navigation bar is relative to the web page on which it is used, e.g., a link to a parent means one thing on pages with the same parent but something else on pages with a different parent. Moreover, current web design tools require a web designer to hierarchically define the website structure and associate links based on the hierarchical structure. Still further, the web designer typically has to switch between the navigation view and the page view to create the hierarchical website structure and the respective web pages, which can cause confusion and inconvenience the website designer, who must remember the hierarchical website structure when linking the web pages.
Given the limitations in the prior art web design tools, there is a need for a more flexible and efficient way to design websites and their pages.
Briefly described, the present invention provides a system and method for designing a website that enables web designers to place hyperlinks to web file content (e.g., web pages) independent of any hierarchical organization of the website""s content. To this end, a link bar element is provided that includes a link bar node and one or more links, each link corresponding to one of several content files, e.g., web pages. The link bar element is associated with at least one web file, and the link bar element includes a link bar name that is included in the at least one link bar web file. The link bar element may be stored in a description file that is separate from the at least one link bar web file. In addition, a link bar may be created independent of a web page for insertion into one or more web pages at a later time. The description file includes an identifier for the link bar node and the one or more links. In addition, the one or more links have a uniform resource locator (URL) therein. Based on the link bar element named within the link bar web file, the description file is translated into additional instructions configured to cause a browser to create web links on a corresponding web page. The web links correspond to the one or more links of the link bar (i.e., links to the link web files).
A data structure is stored on a computer-readable medium. The data structure includes several records, each record describing an element in a website description. The records include a first record type describing a web file with the website and a second record type describing a link bar. The second record type includes a link bar node entry and at least one link entry, the at least one link entry defining a hyperlink to a content file.
The content files include HTML files, graphics files, XML files and the like. As such, one or more content files may be web files (i.e. HTML files, XML files) and may be related in a hierarchical website structure with several parent content files, each having one or more sibling content files. In this embodiment, the link bar element may have one link associated with a first sibling content file of a first parent content file and another link associated with a second sibling content file of a second parent content file. Thus, links to the content files may be provided in one link bar independent of a hierarchical relationship between the content files at the website.
These and other aspects of the invention, together with the benefits and advantages realized, will become apparent from a reading of the following detailed description in conjunction with the drawings, in which: